'Just some childish itch to play detective?' The Literary Career of Robert Barnard: Armidale's Sometime Author of Detective Fiction

Abstract

The first part of this title is quoted from the irritated thoughts of a particular - and apparently fictional- Australian professor of English in his small bushland university, when he discovers that one of his distinctly motley teaching staff is checking up on his own Oxford antecedents and those of others who have at some time in their careers studied in the ancient British university. These remarks all refer to the detective novel, the Australia set - 'The Death of an Old Goat' (London: Collins, 1974) by Robert Barnard.